


Shouldn't

by Menzosarres



Series: "Jeripocalypse" [1]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: F/F, Lesbian Lawyers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-04 01:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5314361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menzosarres/pseuds/Menzosarres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She shouldn’t have slept with her secretary. That one was obvious. But if her male law partners could, and did, then she could, and she did, and she shouldn’t have fallen in love, but she could, and she did, and now look where that had gotten her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shouldn't

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to a tumblr prompt asking for a resolution between Jeri and Pam.

Jeryn Hogarth had learned a lot of lessons in her life. Some more slowly than others. Just because you  _can_ doesn’t mean you  _should,_ for example. She never liked that one. Not doing something always felt too much like  _can’t_  rather than  _shouldn’t_. That’s what happens, fighting your way to the top in a world where everything is stacked against you. _Shouldn’t_  felt a lot more like a challenge than a word of caution.  _Shouldn’t_  felt like  _no_ , and Jeryn Hogarth did not take  _no_ for an answer.

She shouldn’t have slept with her secretary. That one was obvious. But if her male law partners could, and did, then she could, and she did, and she shouldn’t have fallen in love, but she could, and she did, and now look where that had gotten her.

It had gotten her “multiple lacerations” and one particularly deep gash in her hand that made typing incredibly difficult and one dead almost-ex-wife and a law firm full of partners who were calling for her head and…

Pam. Beautiful, challenging, impatient Pam. Sitting in a jail cell. Pretending Jeryn Hogarth did not exist.

That’s what  _shouldn’t_ had gotten her. Next time, maybe, just maybe, she’d actually think twice.

The phone rang.  _Jessica Jones._  “Christ.”

As if she had time for any more bad news. “Jeri Hogarth,” she answered as she tapped the intercom, as though she didn’t know who was on the other line, as though Jess didn’t know who she was calling. Even now, halfway out of a job, she couldn’t stop the rituals, the games.

“Biological material, fetal tissue, Hope Schlottman.”

Of course. More bad news.

“Submitted to testing by J. Hogarth.”

“Kilgrave made me tell him where it was. It’s useless anyway.” Another tally against her in the grand scheme of the poor choices she’d made these past few weeks.

“No, it made him stronger.”

Jeri felt her shoulders tense, the cuts on her back twisting and stretching painfully. There was a feeling clawing its way up the back of her throat, something like  _panic_ , something she had very rarely felt before but which was becoming all too common all too quickly. She did her best to keep it out of her voice. “I don’t know what else I can do to pay for my mistakes. I have bled for them, I have lost everything I care about. Pam is facing murder charges and she won’t see me, and my partners are forcing me out.” It felt… nice, oddly enough, to just spill everything across this phone line. Jessica Jones was a problem, a big one, but… a useful one, before. Now, she was just a convenient ear that could have cared less what Jeri was going through, that probably hated her, and somehow, that was enough.

“Don’t let them.”

Jeri stared at the phone in silence. “Excuse me?” she finally managed, voice hoarse.

“Fight them.”

“Why?” she parried immediately. She hadn’t been expecting this, but she was listening.

“Because you are who you are. A sack of dark oozing shit in an expensive suit.”

She was glad no one was around to see her roll her eyes. “Jessica…”

“Which makes you the best shark in town, and you’re going to represent Justin Boden pro bono.”

Ah. The other shoe. “Who?”

“Another one of Kilgrave’s victims; he’s gonna be charged with murder.” Jeri almost laughed at the irony of it all. “Keep him safe.”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“I’ll text you the info. And this does  _not_  make us square.” A heavy sigh crackled over the line. “But doing something… good…” Jeri could relate to the disgust in that single word all too well. It was over-simplified, under-ambitious, and generally impossible to do anything _good_. People did great things, people did mediocre things, people did terrible things. Rarely was anything so easy as  _good_  or  _bad_. “…it helps with the self-loathing. Trust me.”

The line went dead. Jeri jumped at the dial tone. So that was how things were going to be.

///

She did it. Jessica Jones had done the impossible, and Kilgrave was dead.

Now, on top of all the cases she’d left hanging during this whole mess, she had twenty-six mind-control victims to represent. Jessica couldn’t identify a handful of them, and Jeri was pretty sure they were lying, but if the worst thing she had to do in this disaster was get some poor bastard out of trouble for walking out of the dressing room in the pair of business slacks he hadn’t worn in, it would be a pretty damn good day.

But no, of course that wouldn’t be the worst of it.

Pam’s letter of resignation arrived. Jeri could taste the bitter anger in the words  _three weeks’ notice_ ; the grooves left by the pen had nearly torn through whatever flimsy paper they’d given in her jail. She was still there. She was still there, and Jeri didn’t like it, no matter what Pam had said when she last saw her.

_“You did this.”_

Even now, the memory of the stunned pain in Pam’s voice made her flinch, nervously running her fingertips across the bandages on her hand over and over again.

She could hear her own voice, still, as though from a great distance, insisting, over and over,  _it’s complicated, it was complicated._ It wasn’t, not really. It was… messy, yes. And a hundred other things that all reflected badly on her and then a hundred more she wasn’t ready to confront but complicated? No. Pam was right.  _Complicated_  was an awful lot like _shouldn’t_. It meant  _let me handle it. Watch me._ But Pam had never been one of the bystanders. Pam wanted to play the same games as she did, wanted to be right there with her when Jeri  _handled_  things… right up until the moment everything went to hell.

_“So you turn me into a murderer?”_

Jeri was done playing. Even before she walked into that room she was done playing but… she couldn’t close herself off that easily to Pam. She couldn’t let Pam lash out at her without defending herself, without insisting she wasn’t the only one responsible, flinging blame back and forth with deadly accuracy until it crushed whatever might have been left of their relationship.

_”So now that I understand your bullshit… it’s all that I see when I look at you. You’re repulsive.”_

She hadn’t needed a formal letter of resignation to make that point abundantly clear.

_“I have no idea who this woman is.”_

Jeri had never felt so exhausted as she did in the next ten minutes, sitting in that interrogation room, after the last connection in her life that mattered walked away for good.

But Jeryn Hogarth had never lost a case, and she wasn’t about to start with this one, whether Pam wanted her help or not.  

When she had finally left, she expected Pam’s family to pay the appallingly high bail. They’d paid for law school, after all. Keeping an eye on the proceedings from a distance, though, no one had come forward. A nudge to Jessica (and another paycheck) had revealed a few inconvenient truths. Pam’s family was, indeed, Catholic. They hadn’t talked to her since she started working for Jeri. A murder charge, even with the expected self-defense outcome, hadn’t helped matters.

And so, Pam’s three weeks would tick by in a cell. And however many after that it took to clear the Kilgrave matter out of the local courts. Attempted homicide and unintentional murder in a mess of high-profile lesbian infidelity wasn’t, for once, a high priority.

It could be months.

Jeri wasn’t going to let that happen.

Pam didn’t want her involved. She  _shouldn’t_  get involved. But, really, Jeri had never much liked  _shouldn’t._ Not when she could.

Not with Pam.

///

It was surprisingly difficult to find another lawyer she didn’t already have obvious connections to who was willing to do what she asked. It was easier to steer Pam towards his number. She knew Pam. She knew the kind of person Pam would listen to. He took on a fellow inmate. The inmate passed along his details to Pam. In three days, Jeri was back on the case. Behind the scenes, of course.  

Then, it was just a matter of leverage, and Jeri was excellent at leverage.

///

“I know you got me out of jail.”

“I tried not to let her in, Ms. Hogarth—”

“That’s alright, P—Amber. Close the door.” She almost called her new secretary “Pam.” She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. This was not going to be an easy conversation.

It had been two weeks since the last of the Kilgrave cases wrapped up, and things had just begun to feel… normal again.

She hadn’t expected to see Pam, certainly not barging into her office at half past noon, closely tailed by her frantic new secretary who had been, so far… uninspired. Or, if Jeri admitted it to herself, had just not been Pam. But here she was, with Pam standing on the other side of her desk in one of those just-bordering-on-unprofessional dresses, staring down at Jeri in all her furious glory, and for a moment, she could almost pretend nothing had changed.

“Pam, I didn’t expect—”

“—What, that I’d figure it out? No one else could have gotten my trial moved up like that. You—you  _blackmailed_  a judge! You—”

Jeri turned away, shuffling through the stack of papers by her right hand. “I can assure you, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The papers were ripped out of her hands, scattering across the floor as Pam invaded her personal space. “No, you don’t get to dismiss me like that. And you know what? I don’t care. I  _honestly_  don’t care. I was going to get off anyway. But my new  _job_ , Jeri? I have to know. Did you do this? Did you get me this job? Because, so help me, I’ll—”

“—No.”

She pushed her bangs aside, blinking quickly, a nervous gesture she never could seem to shake. “I didn’t get you the job, Pam. He asked for a reference; that’s all I gave him.”

“You arranged it, though, didn’t you? You just couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

“I couldn’t leave you in prison!”

Jeri was surprised at the fire in her own voice. Pam looked equally startled, mouth halfway open, words trapped.

“I couldn’t… I couldn’t leave you like that. Not… not when I was the one who put you there.”

She shouldn’t. It was the first thought in her mind and  _god_  she shouldn’t be saying these things but Pam was here and she could let her walk out that door angry and unaware or she could… she could tell her. All of it. All the things she hadn’t been able to stop thinking since that day in that room when Pam had been sitting across from someone she didn’t even recognize and Jeri had been sitting across from someone she didn’t think she deserved to love and…

“Yes. I arranged for you to get out early, but I didn’t  _blackmail_  anyone. That judge owed me an honest favor, and squeezing in one extra in-and-out case was barely a… a stretch of the law, not when I was barely even going to be in the courtroom. But I had no idea Murdock was going to offer you a job. I’ve never met the man; it was the only way I could be sure you’d accept my help, but when he called for the reference, he told me, and I quote, ‘That woman did not need a lawyer. She just needed someone to carry her papers into the courtroom.’ I know you ran your own case.”

Pam looked ready to speak, but Jeri held up a hand. Not yet. “But you shouldn’t have been there in the first place because… You were right, you know. All of it. I brought him there that afternoon. Kilgrave.” The name tasted like ash on her tongue. “He was hurt and he said… ‘Someone you trust.’ I have personal doctors. I have  _discreet_  personal doctors. I’m amazed there was even enough trust left in me that I could… I could stretch his words like that, bring him to  _her_ and I… I just kept…” She looked down. Licked her lips. Hid her shaking hands under the edge of the desk. “…I kept thinking,  _I have to do it. I have to handle it._ But that… That wasn’t your fault. I was already so… so  _obsessed_  with the idea of his power, that it could be harnessed, that I could use it… right up until it nearly killed me.” She clenched her hand into a fist, fingers pressing against the bandage that still rested there, smaller, but not healed. “ _I_  went to him, Pam. Not you, not because of you. I screwed up.”

Pam was quiet for a very, very long time. Jeri’s lips were dry. She pressed her fingers to them, breaking eye contact again, turning away.

“I didn’t know you were capable of admitting something like that.” Pam’s voice was gentle.

Jeri almost looked up, but she didn’t trust it.  

“You’re wrong, though.”

This time, she did look up, sharply, brushing her hair aside again, squaring her shoulders, preparing for whatever new insult Pam intended to inflict.

“It wasn’t your fault, either.” Jeri froze. Pam’s hand twitched, drawing her attention. It lifted away from the hem of her skirt, rising in the space between them, then falling away before it could make contact. She wrapped it across her body instead, grasping her own shoulder, turning to stare out the window. “I know what I said, in that room. I… I was cruel, but what did you  _expect_? Coming in there, pretending this it was nothing but business, that you could  _interrogate_  me like any other client and call me ‘Pammy’ in the same breath when I… When I had just…” She let out a slow, shuddering sigh, stepping closer to the glass. “But when I said you did… that, that you made me do… what I did… to your wife… Don’t you see?”

Pam’s hand reached forward, touching the window. The glass fogged around her fingertips, and Jeri could see them trembling almost as much as her own. “That’s his power. That’s who we are, people, we… we’re always going to do this, blame each other, blame other people, instead of acknowledging the power he had over us. Over you. That _wasn’t_  your fault. Any more than what happened to Wendy was m-mine.”

When she heard the catch in Pam’s voice, Jeri couldn’t sit still. She stood, smoothing down her skirt with both palms, before stepping up to the window. She made sure Pam could see her approaching, could see her hand rising in the reflection, and when she didn’t flinch away, Jeri let her fingers gently rest against the younger woman’s back.

Even as Pam let out a bitter laugh, she leaned into the touch. “Don’t you get it? He’s  _still here_ , as long as we keep doing this, as long as were fighting each other and hurting each other and blaming each other… he  _still_  has control!”

Jeri didn’t speak. She had stopped making this about blame a long time ago. She knew what she had done. She knew which thoughts had already been in her mind before she first heard his voice, but if this was what Pam needed, if it was easier for her to—

“The minute he handed Wendy that knife, everything after that, everything between us, was  _him_.”

A strange chill crept up Jeri’s spine. That… wasn’t how her mind worked. She couldn’t separate it, what she’d done to get him there from what he’d done after. It had taken her long enough to  _un_ compartmentalize, to  _stop_  denying her own part, her own fault, her own blame. How could she break it apart again? How could she… She couldn’t… She couldn’t admit how easily he had fractured her perfect, unfailing self-control.

_Couldn’t._

But _can_  is different that  _should_  and maybe…

Just maybe… maybe she should.

Maybe, to move on, she had to. 

“And whatever brought you there… that’s your cross to bear. But I, for one, am done doing his dirty work for him.”

“Me too,” Jeri whispered, and she could hardly believe that breathless, tired sound was her own voice. “Me too,” she said again, and this time, she almost believed it.  

She winced when Pam threw herself into her arms, pressed up against bruises and scrapes and an emptiness that wasn’t ready for human warmth but she managed not to fall, managed to hold them both up, wrapping them together as Pam pressed her face against Jeri’s neck and half-sobbed, “I never even met him, Jeri! I never even saw him and he _ruined my life_.”

“He didn’t,” she murmured, letting her hand find its familiar, comfortable place in Pam’s hair, stroking softly with both fingers and words. “You’re so strong. No one blames you for what happened. You’re young, brilliant, beautiful. You still have your career. You have so much more life to live.”

“I came here to… to find some kind of—of closure, or revenge, maybe, or just to hurt you, I don’t know, but I just…”

Jeri shook her head. “I know.” Her other hand traced slow circles between Pam’s shoulder blades, and for just a moment, she left herself savor the feeling of this beautiful woman in her arms one last time. “I know. It’s okay.”  

“I don’t want to be that person.”

It hurt, a bit, the unspoken words she could hear at the end of that sentence.  _I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be you._  But it was a strange kind of pain. The growing kind.

“I don’t want to hurt the people I love.” 

Jeri felt herself go so still, she couldn’t even feel her own heartbeat. Her lips seemed to move without her permission, breathing words into Pam’s hair. “You don’t have to.”

Then, the woman in her arms was moving, pulling back, and there were hands cupping her face, a thumb tracing the still-fading scar along her cheekbone, and Pam was kissing her, one quick and warm and bruising, then one slow and salty with tears and an ocean of _shouldn’t_ s but Jeryn was kissing her back, pulling her closer, and it was a kiss that tasted like pain, but felt like forgiveness.

And really,  _shouldn’t_  had always sounded a lot closer to  _oh well, too late._


End file.
